Calendaring tool with optimized management capabilities

ABSTRACT

A computer-implemented method, apparatus and computer-readable storage device for arranging a meeting in a networked environment having nodes assigned to respective individual users. Upon receiving a set of meeting requirements including at least a meeting time and a set of invitees from a user at one of the nodes, invitations for a meeting at the meeting time are sent to at least a subset of the invitees based on one or more of the meeting requirements. The meeting is confirmed at the meeting time responsive to receiving acceptances from a predetermined subset of the invitees, such as a set of invitees identified as being critical invitees or a number of invitees constituting a quorum, and is rescheduled or cancelled responsive to a failure to receive acceptances from the predetermined subset of the invitees.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a continuation of copending application Ser. No.13/345,853, filed Jan. 9, 2012, and incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

This invention relates generally to a calendaring tool and moreparticularly to a calendaring tool that allows invitees to respond to ameeting request before the system automatically sends out an invitationto all attendees.

2. Description of the Related Art

In recent years, with the advent of the Internet and othercommunications tools, more businesses rely on computerized calendaringtools to set up both virtual and in-person meetings. One reason for thisincreased reliance is that the attendees to a meeting can be numerousand scattered around the world. Therefore it is cumbersome to set upthese meetings individually and without the use of a computer. Inaddition, automated and virtual calendaring tools enable informationabout the meeting to be accurately forwarded to all participants. Thisis very convenient for the meeting attendees, who can also store thisinformation digitally and use it at the time of the meeting.

Unfortunately, despite calendaring tools that allow for checking ofattendees' availability ahead of time, calendars are not always keptaccurately. Much time and resources are spent in setting up meetings.Nonetheless, last-minute scheduling conflicts can arise when emergenciescause invitees to change their attendance status at the very lastminute. These scheduling challenges create a variety of problems andissues. The first set of problems has to do with scheduling andrescheduling of the calendars so that a first set of attendees deemed tobe critical for the meeting can be present. The second set of problemoccurs in situations where a quorum of attendees has to be present forthe meeting to commence due to particular reasons. In most cases, theseproblems are resolved either by in-person calling or by sending numeroussets of e-mails and other messages to all participants on a continuousbasis. This is an inefficient use of time and resources. In addition,the continuous stream of e-mails causes network and other types ofdigital clutter, which is difficult to manage both for the invitees andfor the originator of the meeting. Notwithstanding all this, anylast-minute cancellations or scheduling conflicts create hard-to-resolvedifficulties for the originator of the meeting.

Consequently, an improved calendaring tool is needed that can automatethe process of scheduling meetings and updating them as needed.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and additional advantagesare provided through the provision of a calendaring tool, method andassociated computer-readable medium for arranging meetings in acomputing environment having at least one processor. The tool comprisesa scheduling mechanism operable to permit a meeting to be arranged at agiven time between two or more participants and has one or more fieldsincluding requirements for sending and receiving messages relating tomeeting invitations. It also comprises an indicator operable to indicatea tentative status when a meeting invitation is sent to at least asubset of invitees in accordance with requirements and a confirmedstatus when responses are received from all invited participants. Themechanism is enabled to send meeting invitations to at least a subset ofinvitees selectively and is also enabled to receive responses back fromthe invitees. In addition, the mechanism is also enabled to finalize themeeting invitation or, alternatively, enabled to send additionalinvitations or information selectively to all or a subset ofparticipants according to the status of the indicator and otherinformation provided by the requirement field(s).

More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to acomputer-implemented method, apparatus and computer-readable storagedevice for arranging a meeting in a networked environment having nodesassigned to respective individual users, each of the nodes comprisingone or more processors, the method being performed by one or moreprocessors at one of the nodes and comprising. Upon receiving a set ofmeeting requirements from a user at one of the nodes, the requirementsincluding at least a meeting time and a set of invitees, invitations fora meeting at the meeting time are sent to at least a subset of theinvitees at the nodes of the networked environment assigned to theinvitees based on one or more of the meeting requirements. The meetingis confirmed at the meeting time responsive to receiving acceptancesfrom a predetermined subset of the invitees at the nodes of thenetworked environment assigned to the invitees, and is rescheduled orcancelled responsive to a failure to receive acceptances from thepredetermined subset of the invitees at the nodes of the networkedenvironment assigned to the invitees.

Optionally, the rescheduling or cancelling is performed responsive to afailure to receive acceptances from the predetermined subset of theinvitees within a predetermined period of time. Optionally, the meetingrequirements identify each invitee as being either a critical invitee ora noncritical invitee, and meeting is confirmed responsive to receivingacceptances from all of the invitees identified as being criticalinvitees. Optionally in such a case, invitations are sent only to theinvitees identified as being critical invitees, and invitations are sentto the invitees identified as being noncritical invitees as part of theconfirmation step. The rescheduling or cancelling may also be performedresponsive to receiving a refusal from an invitee identified as being acritical invitee.

Alternatively, and optionally, the requirements specify a quorum ofinvitees attending the meeting, and the meeting is confirmed responsiveto receiving acceptances from a number of invitees constituting thequorum, and rescheduled or cancelled responsive to receiving refusalsfrom a number of invitees sufficient to defeat the quorum.

Optionally, the progress of the invitation procedure may be tracked byinitially setting a state indicator to a tentative state, and setting itto a confirmed state responsive to receiving acceptances from thepredetermined subset of the invitees. In such an implementation, themeeting is confirmed in response to setting the state indicator to aconfirmed state. Preferably, a calendar entry is generated for themeeting time that observably indicates (e.g., by “graying out” orotherwise) whether the state indicator is in a tentative state.

Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniquesof the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects of the inventionare described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimedinvention. For a better understanding of the invention with advantagesand features, refer to the description and to the drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is an illustration of a computing environment having nodes and/orprocessors in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustration of processes of a calendaring tool inaccordance with one embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 3 is a schematic illustration of some possible fields selected asused by the embodiment of FIG. 1.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 1 shows a networked environment 100 having one or more nodes 110,112, 114 and 116 assigned to respective individual users in anelectronic mail (e-mail) and calendaring system, such as the Lotus®Notes® system available from IBM Corporation. In a preferred embodiment,each of nodes 110-116 comprises one or more processors running suitablesoftware for implementing the disclosed method steps and having suitableinput/output (I/O) functionality for interacting with the user as wellas with other nodes. As shown in FIG. 1, nodes 110-116 are in processingcommunication with one another in the environment 100. One or more ofthe nodes 110-116 can also be in processing communication with nodesresiding in other computing environments (not illustrated). Each nodemay be instantiated by a desktop or laptop computer or by a mobiledevice such as a smartphone, as is known in the art. Also, one or moreof the functions described herein as being performed at a node may beperformed by a server (not separately shown) rather than by a clientmachine or device. Since the nodes 110-116 may be conventional in theirdesign except for the functionality described herein, their internalstructure is not separately shown.

In one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 1, a calendaring tool 120 having ascheduling mechanism 130 is provided on at least one of the nodes110-116. In the example shown, the node having the calendar tool is node110. The other nodes 112-116 also may have some sort of calendaringfeature, but that is not a requirement. For example, in FIG. 1, node 112is provided with calendaring feature 125 and node 114 with calendaringfeature 126. By contrast, node 116 does not have a calendaring featureat all. The calendaring features 125 (on node 112) and 126 (on node 114)may also differ than one another.

Calendaring tool 120 is enabled to process data and providecompatibility with other calendaring tools and features when provided.However, when a calendaring tool or feature is not provided, calendaringtool 120 is still enabled to create entries and process queries andreceive information in the form of electronic messaging and mail and thelike, as known to those skilled in the art, in order to create andupdate calendar entries.

As already noted, in a preferred embodiment the calendaring tool 120 onnode 110 is the Lotus Notes program marketed by IBM Corporation. Theoriginator of a meeting request (also referred to herein as the leader)uses a calendaring tool such as Lotus Notes to generate a list ofinvitees for a meeting to be held at a particular time and/or date.Conventionally, if one or more critical participants who must attend themeeting decline the invitation, the originator of the meeting mustreschedule the meeting, often by sending out a new meeting invitation toall participants on the invitee list. In many cases, this results ine-mail reschedules that occur for all invitees, whether they arecritical or noncritical/optional participants. There are several ways ofresolving this problem, but none of these solutions provides an optimalsolution. For example, in one scenario the meeting can be rescheduledusing the very time-consuming and hands-on solution of firstpre-scheduling the meeting with the critical participants in a first setof meeting invitations. Subsequent to this set of invitations, and onlywhen the critical participants have responded and a tentative schedulehas been established, the originator/leader of the meeting may invitethe remaining noncritical or optional participants. In such a case, theoriginator/leader also has to disable certain calendaring features tomake sure that these noncritical participants no longer have the abilityto propose an alternative time should they not be able to attend. Thisresolution in such a case is performed manually, which is oftentime-consuming with little room for potential improvements and/orautomation.

Another problem occurs in a different context. In certain situations, itmay be desirable to have an established quorum of attendees for aparticular meeting. Often, with certain types of meetings, such as incases of committees, boards or other such gatherings, it is necessaryfor a quorum of participants to convene. For this class of meetings afixed minimal number of participants are required to attend the meetingin order to conduct official business. Frequently, the participants areasked to vote for a particular result and because of that the attendanceof the quorum is mandatory. It should be noted, however, that the quorummay be reached when a certain percentage of critical attendees haveresponded that they can attend the meeting. The individual attendees onthe quorum, however, can be different at different times. For example, afull committee may include members U, V, W, X, Y and Z. To reach aquorum, half of the members must be present for any given meeting.However, in one meeting members U, V and W can be in attendance while atanother meeting members X, Y and Z can be in attendance. While each timethe required quorum is present, there are no required overlaps betweenthe two sets of members in attendance. As before, the obvious manner ofscheduling such meeting is time-consuming and filled with problems. Forexample, the originator may have to schedule the meeting and thenmanually tally up the list of those who can attend. If a quorum is notreached, the invitation has to be resent for a different time and dateand the process repeated until a quorum is reached. Any last-minutecancellations and/or modification of the list of the attendees can thenrestart the process if such modification and/or late cancellation willprevent the reaching of the quorum.

The present invention provides options and mechanisms to allow theoriginator/leader who schedules a meeting to send a preliminaryinvitation to the critical participants. The calendaring tool 120, asshown in FIG. 1, incorporates a scheduling mechanism 130 and anindicator 135. The calendaring tool 120 can establish one or more fieldsbased on the selections of a meeting originator, which can be either ahuman or an automated tool. An example of such fields is shown in FIG. 3and will also be later discussed. These or other such fields, forexample, not only provide a date for the meeting and a list ofparticipants, but can include other requirements. For example, a set ofrequirements can categorize invitees as critical or noncritical.Alternatively, the requirements can include information about thenecessity of a quorum of attendees accepting the meeting invitation.

The mechanism 130 generates and sends invitations to at least a subsetof invitees based on the requirements indicated in the fields. Once themeeting request is sent out, the indicator 135 indicates a tentativestatus, which is ultimately changed to a confirmed status once theexpected responses are received from those invited to the meeting. Basedon the requirements (such as provided in the fields) and type ofresponses received, the mechanism 130 then takes additional actions.Such actions may include finalizing the meeting, including additionalinvitees, providing additional information to the invitees based ontheir type of response, or rescheduling or cancelling the meeting.

In one embodiment, if responses are not received from the invitedparticipants during a preselected time period, the mechanism may alertthe originator and require further action, or automatically engage inalternative action as desired. Again, such action may include a numberof scenarios such as rescheduling or cancelling the meeting.

The use of a preliminary invitation when the participants arecategorized into critical and noncritical groups is advantageous in anumber of situations. In one embodiment, preliminary invitations aresent only to the critical invitees. Only if these preliminaryinvitations are all accepted, and a confirmed status is set on the stateindicator 135, is another set of invitations then sent to thenoncritical invitees. This provides an automated option and alsoeffectively reduces the e-mail clutter for all participants, bothcritical and noncritical/optional, especially when the meetings have tobe rescheduled. Furthermore, it ensures that the noncriticalparticipants do not get the meeting invitation until the prerequisitecritical participants accept the meeting.

In a scenario where the number of attendees is important and a quorumneeds to be reached, a different scheme can be used. In such a case, inone embodiment, a tentative status can be set and reached regarding thestatus of the meeting. The requirement for such a number/percentagecomes into being once a preliminary invitation is sent and is notsatisfied until the specified quorum number or percentage is reachedaccepting the meeting invitation. Once the specified quorum number isreceived, the meeting is marked as confirmed and a final invitation issent and/or added directly to the invitees' calendars as appropriate. Incase of a last-minute reschedule or modification, this process is thenautomatically conducted and a different date is selected or, if it isdeemed that the quorum will be reached despite the modification and/orcancellation, no further action is taken. This provides certainadvantages. For one, the participants to a meeting do not waste theirtime showing up for a meeting where the minimum quorum of participantsare not or will not be in attendance. In addition, any last-minutechanges and/or cancellations can be taken into account automatically sothat adjustments can be appropriately made.

FIG. 3 shows an example of the fields of a meeting record 300 thatstores participant and status information and can be used to control thescheduling of a meeting in accordance with embodiments of the presentinvention. Some or all of the depicted fields may be displayed to theoriginator/leader as the scheduling procedure progresses. As shown inFIG. 3, the fields of the meeting record 300 include originator/leaderID 310, meeting date 320, meeting time 330, meeting location 340,invitees (including address information if not obtained from adirectory) 350, critical invitee list or quorum number 360, receivedresponses 370 (separately tracked for each invitee), and an indicator(“record”) state 380 (shown as indicator 135 in FIG. 1) for use by thetool 120.

Although shown as a single field in FIG. 3, the critical invitee list orquorum number 360 consists of two items of data: (1) an indication ofwhether certain invitees are critical or merely a certain number ofacceptances (constituting a quorum) are required; and (2) an indicationof the critical invitees or quorum number, as the case may be, dependingon the first selection. Critical invitees can be indicated in any one ofa number of ways. For example, rather than having a field separate fromfield 350 listing critical invitees, one could organize invitees 350into separate sublists for critical and optional invitees or have a boxnext to each invitee that can be checked to set a “critical” bit toindicate that the particular invitee is critical. Also, the quorum canbe expressed as either an absolute number (e.g., four invitees) or afraction of the total number of invitees (e.g., 50% of the inviteelist).

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of the operation of the calendaring tool 120 ofFIG. 1 in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. Instep 210 in FIG. 2, in response to a meeting request from anoriginator/leader, the calendaring tool 120 prompts theoriginator/leader for a list of participants as well as otherconventional meeting data such as date, time and location (e.g., bygenerating a display of blank fields to be filled out) and receives thatdata from the originator/leader. These inputs are used to populatefields 320, 330, 340 and 350 in FIG. 3. (The meeting request itself canbe used to populate field 310.)

In step 220, the calendaring tool 120 receives from theoriginator/leader either a categorization of the participants as beingcritical or noncritical/optional or, alternatively, a required number toestablish a quorum. This input is used to populate field 360 in FIG. 3.A variety of methods can be used to accomplish step 220, as indicatedabove. In any event, at the end this step, the calendaring tool 120 willhave received a set of meeting requirements including at least a meetingtime and a set of invitees, with the meeting requirements identifyingeach invitee as being either a critical invitee or a noncritical inviteeor, alternatively, specifying a quorum of invitees attending themeeting. In this example, except where otherwise indicated, it will beassumed that the participants are identified as being either critical ornoncritical participants.

In step 230, the calendaring tool 120 enables the meeting to be promotedto a “pre-request”, or tentative, status. This can be accomplished in anumber of ways as known to those skilled in the art. For example, theoriginator/leader can click on a send button or select other similarfields to enable the sending of preliminary invitations.

In step 240, responsive to this enablement, the tool 120 sendspreliminary invitations to all invitees selected as criticalparticipants or alternatively to all participants that are beingconsidered for achieving a quorum. In some embodiments of the invention,the addresses of the recipients are known to the system and alreadyselected. In other embodiments, the list is then reviewed andappropriate addresses of recipients generated from a larger list such asthose related to a particular Internet or network service.

Thereafter, in step 250, the tool 120 sets the record state 380(corresponding to the indicator 135 in FIG. 1) to a “pre-request”, or“tentative”, state. The calendaring tool 120 may also mark theoriginator/leader's calendar with an indicator observably (preferablyvisibly) specifying the pre-request or tentative status. The indicatorcan be a flag or an entry using a differently shaded font orhighlighting or any other such distinguishing feature selectively chosenby the originator/leader at an earlier time and as known by thoseskilled in the art. For example, the time slot can be “grayed out” onassociated calendar entries (especially those of invitees whoseattendance is required) to indicate that the meeting time is tentative.Such a real-time indication of the effects of a movement of the calendarentry could help a calendar administrator recognize the consequences ofmoving the entry.

Once the critical participants receive the pre-request or tentativemeeting invitations, they either respond or not by a certain date and/ortime. Responses are received and processed by the tool 120automatically, and reminders are generated and sent automatically tousers who do not respond by a certain date/time. If repeated attempts toobtain a response from a particular invitee fail, then at step 260 thetool 120 can generate a message to the originator/leader. In such a casethe originator/leader can take a variety of actions, such as cancellingthe meeting or, at step 270, modifying the date 320, time 330 orlocation 340 of the meeting or modifying invitee list 350 (e.g., bymodifying the address of the non-responding invitee or removing theinvitee from the list altogether). In the event of any suchmodification, the procedure returns to step 230.

If no modifications and/or cancellations are made, the calendar tool 120waits to receive all pre-request invitation responses. The tool 120 thenanalyses the responses as indicated in step 275.

Step 275 is reached if all critical invitees have responded, one or morecritical invitees have responded negatively or, optionally, apredetermined time period for reply has elapsed. If one or more criticalinvitees (or a number sufficient to defeat a quorum) have respondednegatively, or if the time limit for reply has elapsed and all criticalinvitees (or a number sufficient to constitute a quorum) have notresponded positively, then the flow advances to step 277, where theoriginator/leader may choose to cancel the meeting or reschedule it. Ifthe originator/leader chooses to cancel the meeting, then at step 278the tool 120 sends appropriate cancellation notices to the invitees towhom invitations have already been sent, and the program terminates. If,on the other hand, the originator/leader opts at step 277 to reschedulethe meeting, then the originator/leader updates date and time fields 320and 330 as appropriate (and possibly other fields as well, such as thecritical list 360), and the flow returns to step 230 where it proceedsas before.

The flow moves to step 280 if either all critical invitees or theminimum number of attendees for a quorum, as the case may be, haveaccepted. In such event, the calendaring tool 120 sets the record state370 (shown as indicator 135 in FIG. 1) to indicate that the meeting hasmoved from the pre-request or tentative state to an accepted orconfirmed state.

Optionally, following step 280, the leader/originator is given anotherchance to change, cancel or modify the meeting as appropriate. If nochanges are made, then in step 285 the tool 120 sends out a finalmeeting notice. In one embodiment, this final meeting notice is sent toall invitees, even those who have previously responded. Alternatively,as discussed below, the confirmation notice is sent only to thoseinvitees (noncritical, or in excess of a quorum) who have not alreadyaccepted.

If at step 286 the meeting notice sent at step 285 is accepted (in thesense indicated for step 275), then the tool 120 proceeds to schedulethe meeting at step 290. Otherwise, the flow returns to step 277, wherethe originator/leader may again decide whether to reschedule or cancel.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the initial meeting noticesent in step 240 only includes minimal information about the meeting asselected by the originator/leader. The final meeting notice when sentcan include additional information and/or attachments. For example, afinal meeting notice may attach a set of charts and/or a particularpresentation to it. Sending large files and/or presentations with theinitial notice clogs the participants' mail, especially if the files arelarge. In one embodiment of the invention, such attachments orinformation are preselected by the user at the time of attendee listgeneration and designation. In an alternative embodiment, theoriginator/leader can modify or add to the information that is sent toall participants once the initial meeting notice is accepted. Forexample, the location of the meeting can be added or altered or a filecan be attached at a later date once the originator/leader is assuredthat the meeting will occur at a particular date and time.

In an alternative embodiment, if no further action is to be taken, thefinal meeting notice is only sent to the noncritical participants oncethe critical participants have accepted the invitation. This is toprevent the critical attendees from receiving two or more invitationsthat can clog their database.

In an alternative embodiment of the present invention, a set of datescan be preselected by the originator/leader at the outset and, in caseof a decline, the tool 120 automatically resends a pre-request meetingnotice to those in the critical list. In such a case the meeting datesare picked from a preselected priority generated by theoriginator/leader. All preselected dates are then tried before theoriginator/leader is notified that none of the dates meet all criticalparticipants' acceptance. Alternatively, if one or more of thepreselected dates are accepted, this new date is used and theoriginator/leader is notified and his or her calendar is updatedautomatically.

In both cases, in one embodiment, prior to sending of the final meetingnotice, the originator/leader can also decide to cancel or reschedulethe date prior to all invitations going out.

In an alternative embodiment, the tool 120 is enabled to check calendarentries of participants on the critical list automatically and provideavailability to the originator/leader prior to the pre-request invitebeing sent to the critical participants. In one embodiment, the tool 120generates a list of first available date and time slot in accordancewith availability indicated on the calendars of all criticalparticipants. Subsequent availabilities after this date are then alsoprovided as an automated aid to the originator/leader to select anappropriate date that can potentially yield the most amount of accepts.As discussed this process is completed prior to when step 230 and/or 240is performed in FIG. 2.

In one embodiment, the tool 120 can be designed to indicate to theoriginator/leader the responses and the updating of the meeting recordas one state is being changed to another. This can be done at severallevels. In one embodiment, the originator/leader can be informed of theresponse of each invitee as it comes in. In another embodiment, the tool120 itself tracks responses at the individual level, as in the firstembodiment, but the originator/leader is only informed of responses thatresult in a change in the record state 380—for example, an acceptance bya last critical invitee, a refusal by a critical invitee, or theestablishment or defeating of a required quorum. This can beaccomplished, for example, by updating the meeting record 300 (FIG. 3)to set record state 380 to “pre-request” and the response 370 of theaccepting invitee to “accept”, while leaving everything else the same.

While the invention has been described in accordance with certainpreferred embodiments thereof, those skilled in the art will understandthe many modifications and enhancements which can be made theretowithout departing from the true scope and spirit of the invention, whichis limited only by the claims appended below.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-readable storage medium havinginstructions recorded thereon, the instructions being executable by aprocessor to perform a method for arranging a meeting in a networkedenvironment having nodes assigned to respective individual users, eachof said nodes comprising one or more processors, said method beingperformed by one or more processors at one of said nodes and comprising:receiving a set of meeting requirements from a user at said one of saidnodes, said requirements including at least a meeting time and a set ofinvitees and specifying a subset of said invitees by identifyinginvitees in said subset as critical employees; sending invitations for ameeting at said meeting time only to the invitees identified as criticalinvitees at the nodes of said networked environment assigned to saidinvitees based on one or more of said meeting requirements; confirmingsaid meeting at said meeting time responsive to receiving acceptancesfrom all of the invitees identified as critical invitees at the nodes ofsaid networked environment assigned to said invitees, wherein theconfirming comprises sending invitations to invitees not identified ascritical invitees; and rescheduling or cancelling said meetingresponsive to a failure to receive acceptances from all of the inviteesidentified as critical invitees at the nodes of said networkedenvironment assigned to said invitees.
 2. The computer-readable storagemedium of claim 1, wherein the rescheduling or cancelling is performedresponsive to a failure to receive acceptances from all of the inviteesidentified as critical invitees within a predetermined period of time.3. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein therescheduling or cancelling is performed responsive to receiving arefusal from an invitee identified as being a critical invitee.
 4. Thecomputer-readable storage medium of claim 1, said method furthercomprising: setting a state indicator to a tentative state; and settingsaid state indicator to a confirmed state responsive to receivingacceptances from all of the invitees identified as being criticalinvitees.
 5. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, whereinsaid confirming is performed in response to setting of said stateindicator to a confirmed state.
 6. The computer-readable storage mediumof claim 4, wherein a calendar entry is generated for the meeting timethat observably indicates whether the state indicator is in a tentativestate.
 7. Apparatus for arranging a meeting in a networked environmenthaving nodes assigned to respective individual users, said apparatuscomprising one or more processors deployable at one of said nodes, saidone or more processors being configured to perform a method comprising:receiving a set of meeting requirements from a user at said one of saidnodes, said requirements including at least a meeting time and a set ofinvitees and specifying a subset of said invitees by identifyinginvitees in said subset as critical employees; sending invitations for ameeting at said meeting time only to the invitees identified as criticalinvitees at the nodes of said networked environment assigned to saidinvitees based on one or more of said meeting requirements; confirmingsaid meeting at said meeting time responsive to receiving acceptancesfrom all of the invitees identified as critical invitees at the nodes ofsaid networked environment assigned to said invitees, wherein theconfirming comprises sending invitations to invitees not identified ascritical invitees; and rescheduling or cancelling said meetingresponsive to a failure to receive acceptances from all of the inviteesidentified as critical invitees at the nodes of said networkedenvironment assigned to said invitees.
 8. The apparatus of claim 7,wherein the rescheduling or cancelling is performed responsive to afailure to receive acceptances from all of the invitees identified ascritical invitees within a predetermined period of time.
 9. Theapparatus of claim 7, wherein the rescheduling or cancelling isperformed responsive to receiving a refusal from an invitee identifiedas being a critical invitee.
 10. The apparatus of claim 7, said methodfurther comprising: setting a state indicator to a tentative state; andsetting said state indicator to a confirmed state responsive toreceiving acceptances from all of the invitees identified as beingcritical invitee.
 11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein said confirmingis performed in response to setting of said state indicator to aconfirmed state.
 12. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein a calendar entryis generated for the meeting time that observably indicates whether thestate indicator is in a tentative state.